Blood On A Rose Thorn
by WeAreTomorrow
Summary: Simon-centric. Before everything else there is the need to be loved. Dark. Mild slash.
1. Chapter 1

_**...at the heart of madness is a broken love...**_

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><p><strong>Love <strong>**[luhv]**

**1. **A feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.

**2**. Sexual desires or wants.

**3**. A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.

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><p><strong>:: One ::<strong>

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><p>Before everything else there is the <em>need to be loved<em>.

That's his _childhood_. The echo of his own footsteps as he runs after everybody else. There are always echoes. His world is made of _glass_ and _cold metal_.

The part of him that still believes in happy endings thinks that if his screams, their laughter, the _pain_ doesn't echo than it's not real. So he muffles his screams with both hands and doesn't let the tears_ pitter patter _on the ground.

But they laugh at him anyway and it echoes and echoes (_and echoes_).

He loves his parents so much. He tells them every day.

"Hello, I'm home. I love you."

Is that strange? They tell him to stop, please, it's not normal. And it _echoes_.

Please. Stop it, please. It's not. Normal. Stop.

Broken sentences that break him into _little pieces_ because his world is made of _glass_ and _cold metal_ and his reflection is shattered in the uneven tiles of the ground as he _runs_.

He runs and he runs (_and runs away_).

And everywhere he goes his feet _echo_. And everywhere there's the ragged in-out of his breath and the half sobs _and the pain_, louder then anything.

He blinks away a tear and trips on an uneven edge of something _hard _and _unforgiving_. He falls, like he always does because he's soft and small and he wants to be _loved so badly_.

He falls forward onto his hands and knees and _hisses_. It echoes.

And that's how he realizes he's hurt. That's how he realizes that his skin is scraped raw and that he's _bleeding_, little pinpricks of red_ swelling_ on the flat of his palm, _clinging _to it, like tiny balloons.

The echoes of himself feel _more real_ then anything.

That's the first time he ran away. There are more.

Sometimes there's a reason, sometimes there's not. But there's always the cold and _unforgiving truth_ that nobody cares. Nobody _cares_.

Not about him.

Once, he's gone _two weeks_. His parents have been fighting again in their usual stiff, silent way. The house is quieter than usual, music turned off. The dishes clink as his mother cleans them calmly in the sink.

Her face is blank. _Bruised_.

His dad is oblivious.

He wonders why she doesn't say anything, why she doesn't grab someone and say, "_Look at me! Look at what happened to me! Why don't you ask me what happened_?"

Why don't you_ care_?

But he knows why she doesn't say anything. Why she doesn't mention it.

Because the echoes of her questions would make it real.

If he had someone to talk to, not like a shrink _but like a friend_, he would tell them that he thinks his mother _can't_ love him. It's not that she doesn't want to, it's that he knows _too much_ about her. That he's _too much_ like her.

He'd tell someone that its not her fault and hope the echoes carry it back to her.

He'd told Matt once.

Maybe he _loves _Matt just a little, for the right reasons. Mostly for the _wrong ones_.

When he first meets Matt he's eleven and Matt still has brown hair and glasses that are too big for him. He tells Matt about the echoes and they sit together in one of those endless hallways.

They sit and talk long and loud and _don't stop_, trying to drown it all out.

But eventually they run out of things to say and Matt has parents that notice if he doesn't come home. Parents that_ like_ him, that _care_.

Maybe he adores Matt a little too obviously. Maybe he expects too much from Matt because if his own parents _don't love him_ why should anyone else? But the word _friend_ is delicious and exotic.

He says it over and over (_and over again_).

"Mom, have you met my new _friend_?"

"Mom, I'm going to my_ friend's _house."

"Mom, my _friend_ is coming over."

"Mom, he's great, isn't he. Isn't he, Mom?"

Maybe if he _needed_ a little less and wasn't quite so desperately_ giving_ Matt wouldn't have turned around and twisted the knife quite so deep into his stomach.

Not his back, _never_ his back.

He knows better than that because no one has ever stayed for him. And no one has ever bothered to say goodbye.

And, yes, even though _friend_ is still sweet and strange on the tip of his tongue he always knew it would come to this. So he doesn't turn around, determined to say goodbye, this time.

How could he have guessed that it would have ended like this?

Matt's jeering laughter, the _loudest echo of all_ and it won't fade, it's there all the time driving him crazy. He just wanted to make it stop, _dear god_. He just wanted to make it _stop_.

That's what he whispers to the match, his breath making the wispy flames tremble before he drops it through the slot.

"_Make it stop_."

For a _beautifully perfect moment _the crackle of fire drowns everything else out.

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><p><strong>:: Two ::<strong>

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><p>The truth is, not much has<em> changed<em>.

Everything is made of_ glass_ and _cold metal_ and the echoes are tangible enough to rip into pieces. He does.

He changes wards. The echoes are louder and louder (_and louder still_).

He stops_ needing_. He stops_ loving_ everybody so damn much because love tastes bitter and sharp. He shuts off.

And then there was Lucy.

She _scares_ him.

There's something in her dark eyes that looks like _love but also like hate_ and the sameness of the two makes him_ tremble_. She looks at him with fire, like she could tear him into pieces.

She burns a hole through his chest from across the room, cutting through the other people, the _useless tears_ and empty denials.

He didn't cry.

He's _numb_; all the tears frozen inside his head, making him cold and robotic. He is a mommy's boy now, isn't he?

She melts that a little bit. Late at night, his shallow breaths the only echoes, he imagines water dripping out his ears, little _pitter patter_ echoes like teardrops.

He imagines she'll melt his brain into an ocean and _drown_ him in it.

There are five of them sitting in a circle. They have to tell each other why they're here. Nobody makes eye contact and Lucy stares holes into him like bullets.

"I'm here because I'm fat," says the blonde skeleton with a girl's face. Something about her _makes him sick_ but he_ can't look away_. He counts her ribs, the bones in her arms, her legs.

"You're not fat."

His voice is unsteady, unused. It _echoes_ around the enclosed room.

"You're not. You're. Fat. Fat. Fat."

The girl's face contorts, trying to cry and trying (_and trying so hard_). She can't, there's nothing for her to cry out. She pulls at her hair in frustration, in despair and it falls out in her skeleton hands.

He's horrified. He's watching a person _come apart _before his eyes. And all the while, Lucy is burning him alive. The skeleton girl drags her fingernails across her face, _screaming at them_.

"Why am I so _ugly_?"

Angry, red gashes cut diagonal across her human mask. He wants to look away but _he can't_. He wonders what she sees when she looks in the mirror. He wonders what other people see when they look at him.

_Very good_, says the attendant, bright smile painted on. She looks right through them.

Everyone here looks _right through them_. They are the least real thing in this place. Sometimes he sits very, very still and holds his breath, trying to _disappear completely_.

His shrink scribbles this down when he tells her.

Is _this_ what he is now? Quietly snatched breaths and the swirled scrawl of a fountain pen in a black notebook.

Sometimes he _loves_ Lucy back. Her stare keeps him pinned to his chair, to this place, _to his life_ when he's on the edge of falling over and just becoming completely _invisible_.

It's the day after the day he loses track of what day it is. The hallway patrol walks by his door, footsteps echoing long after they're gone.

He breathes out. In. Out. _Out._

A raw _whisper_ slithers through the crack under the door.

"Simon."

(Simon, Simon, _Simon_.)

He's never heard her speak before but he knows exactly who it is. Lucy's voice, like her dark eyes, _burn_ him.

He touches the door, half expecting her heat to seep through the wood. But it's cool to the touch. He sets his palm flat against it.

Eyes closed, he can picture her hand pressed to his on the opposite side. Another kind of echo.

For some reason his breath hitches; comes faster, louder, _harsher_. His heartbeat echoes too, beating wildly, drowning everything else out, so loud he wonders if his own heart is still beating underneath the layers of noise.

"_Simon_."

Breathy now, but still dark. Still that strange mixture of _hate_ and _love_, like he's balancing on a knife tip and the fall to either is long and dangerous.

Almost against his will, his other hand trails down, across the trembling skin of his stomach. White skin; _almost see-through_, he thinks suddenly.

His shaking fingers stop at the rim of his briefs.

"_Do it_."

Barely a hiss, darker still and filled with anticipation. He imagines her pressing her hand _hard_ against the wood, urging him on. He imagines her hand on fire, burning through the wood, grabbing him. _Burning him_.

His hand slips further.

"_Lucy_."

One month, three weeks and seven days after the day he loses track of what day it is they tell him he's cured. He feels Lucy's dark stare burning him through the walls and wonders when he became _such a good liar_. The word echoes in his head. It sounds like her.

He _leaves_ and doesn't look back.

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><p><strong>:: Three ::<strong>

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><p>Be careful what you wish for.<p>

He understands what it means too late. Isn't that the point?

He's_ invisible_.

Walking without noise, without echoes. A mirror without his reflection. It's like he's erased himself from the world. They all see right through him.

Not that they didn't before.

Freak. Weirdo. _Creep_.

The world continued to turn while he was inside, trapped between white walls and a_ violent attraction _that still wakes him up at night, holding his mouth shut with both hands.

Because if there are _no echoes_…

He isn't now, completely real. Like this. He gets stuck once, for hours. He sits in his parent's dining room and _doesn't even notice_ he's turned until his mom takes his chair out from under him. And even then it takes him a second to understand, to connect the dots that should have been obvious.

Does a tree make a sound if no one's around to hear it fall?

Does he _exist_ anymore?

A lazy thought forms in his half conscious state: Maybe Lucy did kill him this time. Maybe he's in _hell_. Maybe he's in_ heaven_. Things go fuzzy around the edges and he tumbles to the floor.

His mother looks at him, surprised.

"Simon? Where did you come from?"

She turns away and he lies unconvincingly to her stiff back; she doesn't care. The lies taste bitter and metallic. There's a faint_ pitter patter_ echo, like water. He realizes he's bleeding. He bit his tongue.

It still hurts the next morning when he goes to do community service.

Is it wrong that _this is_ _the best_ part of his day?

There's a little echo of _yes_. But he can't help it. These people are bound to him in a way they can't break free off. They can't just turn around and _walk away_. There is no _goodbye_.

He can turn his back on them. He can almost _trust them_.

They _killed_ together.

And if that's what it takes for people to look at him then _goddamn it_, what is he suppose to do? He _needs_ them. That's the truth, which has never been very nice to him.

Why break old habits?

Why when Nathan looks _nothing_ like Matt, except for the familiar sharpness in his gut when Nathan _looks at him_ and laughs? Why, when the familiar feeling of his insides melting is so _comforting_? More echoes.

But Nathan is less cruel.

Nathan doesn't _hate_ him, it's just who he is. Words spilling from lips like _waterfalls_, choking him up sometimes by what Nathan says, the meaning he hears behind them that make him wake up with his hands covering his mouth for different reasons. Nathan couldn't stop himself if he _tried_. If _his life_ depended on it. He thinks it'll get him _killed_ some day and he's right.

Over and over (_and over again_).

And then there's Kelly. Kelly _who protects him_. Kelly _who cares_ about his feelings because she _understands_. Kelly who can hear his thoughts and _just smiles_ at him.

Our little secret. Our. Secret. Secret. _Secret_.

He _loves_ them, these people, all of them. These_ freaks_, who don't dislike like him and that see him and are linked to him and ways they can_ never break_.

He_ loves _them. And maybe someday, they'll _love _him back.

(_A fading echo. Love.._.)

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><p>Just trying out another style. Hope you enjoyed.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

Hey guys…

I've decided to do a bit of spring-cleaning.

I'm going to take down all of my works for the month of May and edit them. Not only will I fix all those annoying grammar mistakes but there will be new chapters and sections added, especially for longer pieces such as _Damn Implications_.

I'm going to try to find a way to re-upload without losing all my amazing reviews but please author alert me just in case.

See you on June 1st!


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